Lucky Pig

I'm really glad I had my arena back over the weekend because after our field trip, it was apparent that I'd really only be able to ride TC at home for the winter! 

On both days, we had truly great rides. I'm starting to think that the neighbor's pig has something to do with it. Ever since we met this pig, we've been having great rides. I've been calling him TC's "lucky pig" such as "do you want to go see your lucky pig?" when we walk down the road.

Lucky pig is not in this pasture but in
the pasture beyond it

Continuing the pattern from the last ride I wrote about, I've implemented the following:

- Have a plan for each work set

- Canter a little bit early on

- Canter trot transitions later on

- Mix of lateral work and bending lines to address straightness

- Address forward energy with my spur (not whip) and to a point where I can half halt him

It's been so helpful, but also challenging, to force myself to come up with exercises for TC to do each work set, but he really does seem to like them. And it's in this specific way that I feel like I have my horse back, not just from a few years ago, but the essence of what made me want to buy this horse. 

I can't find the post, but I remember vividly early on with him where I painstakingly taught him to do turns on the forehand one ride. It was like pulling teeth. He really struggled through doing them VERY slowly and I praised him for them of course but went home thinking that he was going to be SO hard to get lateral work on. 

Then he had a couple of days off and when I got on him next, he dragged me to this one part of the arena (the same part of the arena we were doing the turns on the forehand the ride before). He stood there, almost vibrating under me. And when I put my leg on, he took a deep breath and he did a pretty decent turn on the forehand. That was the moment I knew I wanted to buy that horse. He wanted so much to do the thing I had been asking him to do. 

He says gimme snax

And I ruined that part of him! So much of dressage is making a horse wait wait wait for an aid. I think once we hit the mid levels, we lost that kind of play and fun in learning new things. It was about doing it, doing it right, and doing it right now. Anticipation was the enemy, and it was to be squashed out of him.

I haven't felt him get excited about an exercise in so so long. So these rides where we are repeating exercises and he gets a little giddy because he knows what is coming up next? That's my horse, that's me getting my horse back. 

The 10-10-10 canter-trot-canter exercise is definitely one of his favorites. Feeling him sneak into canter - willingly go MORE forward on his own - has been the best part of it. I've made it a rule now not to care if he slips into canter early or even if he ends the canter early. I count and aid but do not punish if he changes it up on me. 

It's pretty beautiful at the ranch when
it's green

One of MY favorites is one that Kate gave me. It's been a game changer for his straightness and connection, and not too difficult for him to stay forward during.

You start on a figure-8, 20m circles in each direction. Tracking to the right, ride one circle bending to the right, then hold that bend as you change direction tracking left. Ride one circle tracking left but holding the right bend. As you come to the middle of the figure-8, don't change directions, but change bend so that you are now bending left and tracking left. Ride one circle like that and as you get back to the middle, change directions but don't change the bend, so you are now riding on the right circle but bending left. Then repeat. So two circles left, two circles right, but it'll ride right bend, left bend x2, right bend. 

It's been SUPER interesting to watch TC struggle through this. When tracking left, he finds it difficult to keep his haunches out, so when we are counter-bent, he falls inward and makes the circle really small. Tracking right, he actually feels better counter-bent, because all he wants to do is fall through his left shoulder and keep his haunches right. So I've been riding the counter-bent right circle in a bit like shoulders-out, which he finds tricky. In both directions, when we switch to true bend, he feels AMAZING and much better connected. 

I need to find my noseband lol we look
so non-legit right now

In general, I feel like I'm getting him much better connected, much better forward, and am at least starting to address the straightness issues. He's coming out more willing to go to the contact, I'm even getting glimpses of the dreamy connection he used to have. 

I still do feel like there's a slight disconnect, but it's further back along his topline now. When I first started riding him earlier this month, I felt like I had maybe 20% of his neck in my influence and that was it. Now I solidly get 60%, and it's slowly inching down toward his thoracic sling, but I'm still locked out of his back and hind legs. That's fine, I feel like I can get to them via a middleman if that makes sense? 

It's trending in the right direction! And not only that, but I feel like he's starting to trust the work again. I think for a long time, the work made him feel really off balance and and probably physically didn't feel good (or at worst, where it hurt him). For a while that caused him to say no to everything, even things he liked in the past. And now I'm feeling more and more that he says yes. And I think that is the most important part, because with that, we will slowly be able to get back to where I'd like him to be. 

All we need is time and a lucky pig

Another cool thing I noticed the other day is that I THINK he is putting on a little muscle in his neck. He's also put on a small amount of weight (just from the rain I think, being locked in + not being ridden), so maybe that's what I'm seeing. His back still looks like crap, but I can convince myself that he has put on some muscle in his hamstrings and glutes. I think the back will be the last thing to come in. At least, the trapezius was the last thing he developed as a young horse (both thoracic and cervical).

I'll be curious about the vet visit in February, both to see how much he weighs (hopefully getting him back down to the same body condition score beforehand) and to see what my vet thinks of his progress. 

Either way, I'm glad that he's having fun undersaddle right now though. I do think it's helping him, both mentally (he's been happily coming up to me in his paddock) and hopefully physically (I can definitely get him more connected riding him vs long lining him). Only time will tell though! 

A Great Ride

I had probably the best ride of our rehab so far yesterday so I wanted to document it! 

For context, the last three rides looked like this:

Thursday 12/18 - I posted about that in my last post

Friday 12/19 - We went on a trail ride for about an hour. He was really good and didn't have any spooking/balking. I did some lateral work on the hills, specifically working on strengthening his left hind leg. 

Saturday 12/20 - We had an okay ride, I was glad to get some video and I really noticed that he seemed plenty forward when watching him, but I know he felt behind my leg. He had a couple of small hesitations (I wouldn't even call them balks) but outside of that he was compliant. At the end of our ride, I finally got annoyed and really hustled him along, and then we ended on a good note. But in the video he was 

THEN I took him on the tracks and he seemed perky, so I let him pick up the trot on the back lane (a long, wide, slightly uphill section that spans almost the entire length of the property behind the pastures) and then had the idea that maybe I could let him canter out there. He picked up canter really easily and loped up the hill until he got a little tired. 

Our last day on the trails for a while, bummer!

I figured that we should do the other lead, so I walked him back down to the bottom of the back lane and then asked him to canter again. This time he really went for it, so I got up in half seat and let him go. He was gaining speed though, and I'm like... pretty aware that my vet called him borderline neuro last time we went to see him, so I asked TC to maybe keep it contained. TC took that as an invitation to leap into the air, so then I kicked him forward and decided that I'd just lean back a bit just in case! 

Finally we were getting to the normal spot where he poops out, so I sat back and was anticipating him stopping. He did not stop, he again took that as a cue to leap even HIGHER into the air and I almost came off. I was hanging off the right side of him and somehow managed to yell "well, don't lose me!?!" and he scooped me back up. I then made him continue cantering all the way up the steeper part of the hill when he finally stopped.

It did kind of scare me though, so I forced the poor horse back down the back lane to do it AGAIN, and this time we did a very controlled, easy canter for maybe eighteen strides before I let him walk and cool out. Looking back, it was super fun! Fun to feel him so enthusiastic about moving forward. 

Sunday 12/21 - I gave him and myself the day off, he was locked in for the day because of the rain, but was then let back out on Monday morning. 

He's such a good trail horse

So then yesterday I drove down to the ranch over my lunch break, and I was glad to see that my arena was useable! I dragged it and then went to get TC out.

I started to target train his right hind leg - I want to ask him to step toward the target, specifically taking a step away from his body with his right hind and aiming to touch his gaskin with the target. He didn't really understand it at first, but we did get some good movement. I think it'll take a few days. This is mostly because his right hind is stuffed up under his body ALL the time, even in the cross ties. And as he's (slowly) putting on muscle, I'm noticing that his right hind is lacking muscle just above the stifle in comparison to the left hind. Anyway, hopefully this can help him!

Love this spot looking down on the ranch!

We then started our ride by walking down the road, which I've been avoiding doing too much for his feet. He does love it though, and he got to see all his horse and cow friends. I tried to show him the new pig that the neighbor got but it was too far away and he was focusing on something else. 

Once in the arena, I had decided to be more structured with my ride. Using my interval timer, you'd think I'd be coordinated in general, but I haven't been. So for each of our eight 2 minute 15 second intervals (4 sets of 1 interval + 1 minute rest + 1 interval each and then he gets a longer break) I had a plan going into them. 

Set 1: Warm Up

I warmed TC up with large figures, working on establishing a connection and bend in each direction. We also worked a little bit on just being responsive to the aids. I didn't care if he maintained it or if he was just being a little more forward, just that he responded at all. He got lots of praise! I also asked him to very briefly canter in each direction for 3/4 of a large circle. Not caring if he was on the bit or anything, just wondering if that might loosen him up.

Set 2: Lateral Work + Lengthenings

On Saturday I had played with an exercise where we'd do some lateral work down the long sides of the arena and then we'd straighten, counter flex, and lengthen on the short sides. I figure that this will help him with his straightness, as well as give him confidence that when I ask him to go forward I'm not going to just chase him endlessly. And it works well with my plan to not ask him to do as hard of work when he's moving forward and to ask him to work a little harder if he's moving slower. 

Set 3: Shallow Loop + 15m Circles

For this exercise, I really wanted to test the connection and the coordination of his hind legs after priming him to be more aware of them from the second set. We did shallow loops down the longside and then every other loop, we'd ride a 15 meter circle at the top of the arena. It was a good way for me to really focus on the way that he used his hind legs and not to just shove them around, and it was good to see how he used himself on the 15 meter circle too. We also did a couple of long diagonals in a lengthened trot, since he was starting to kind of feel himself during this exercise and he seemed to think those were fun!

Such a fun day

Set 4: 10-10-10 Canter Trot Transitions

I decided to take a bit of a risk and do more cantering this ride. In the past, the canter was a source of a lot of balking. About half the time I asked last year, he'd either buck in place, run sideways, kick at my leg, or just stop and stick his head straight up in the air. So throughout this rehab, I've avoided cantering him too much. 

However, one of his favorite exercises (and mine too) was this 10-10-10 exercise I love for unresponsive horses. You trot for 10 strides, then canter for 10 strides, then trot for 10 strides, and so on. The goal is to get EXACTLY ten strides, no more no less. With Rico, and TC in the past, I'd then start to lower the numbers, so trot for 9 strides, canter for 9 strides, and so on. Rico was able to do this at like 2-3 strides, which is CRAZY to think about now! TC would consistently be able to do maybe 6? I forget to be honest. 

He super lit up in this exercise, and so did I. I actually had to half halt him at the trot, and sometimes he'd even slip into canter early. To the right, we were dead on accurate, but to the left he was a little reluctant to do all 10 canter strides. I made it a rule not to get after him about that, just to bring him to trot and start the counting again. 

I didn't have him do this the entire 2 minutes 15 seconds in each direction, I ended up doing maybe 3-4 of them and then keeping him in trot, mostly just working on large figures and enjoying how forward he was (and praising him for it!). 

The ranch is so casually beautiful

It was the best ride we've had in SO long! I felt like we could really work on things the two of us together rather than it being me against him trying to convince him to be forward and him trying to convince me to not make him be forward. 

The best part was how much he seemed to enjoy it too. Not just the last set, but the entire time he seemed really mentally engaged with the work. I can't remember when he was last like that with dressage work. During our foray into jumping last winter, I felt like I had that back, but then things got bad again. Hopefully this can be maintained through the winter and into next year! 

TC got to meet the neighbor's new pig after our
ride and he was SO excited (he actually scared
the pig at first by charging up to it)

I'll ride him again today and hopefully we can replicate some of this good work. And then Christmas Eve I'm planning on doing some groundwork in the barn (maybe targeting his butt cheeks again) since it will be raining all day. And Christmas Day I'm at my aunts' house all day which is convenient because it's going to rain all day again. I think it's alright if he gets a couple of days off after all of that work! 

My plan is to still get his neck injected and maybe talk to the vet about how he uses his right hind. I'm kind of thinking that an SI injection might not be a bad idea? I want to figure out how many joints is possible with what is leftover after the initial injections last month and prioritize them. We can always pull more blood but again I'm trying to take this slow! 

Slowing Down + Adding Lateral Work

TC has been pretty good this week! I'm still kind of experimenting with things to get us on the same page. After watching the last video I took (trying to take them every week), I noticed that when I thought he was forward enough, he was borderline running past his balance. 

He's always looked different than he feels to ride, which has been a struggle for me in the past (and now!). He looks more forward, more active, more responsive than he feels, and I've had instructors tell me to slow down when he feels like he's barely moving. 

I know a lot of this comes down to responsiveness, and in the past I've basically just added tension to get that responsiveness, and I'd rather not do that this time around.

TC likes to stop to say hi to Rico

Another big part of why I want to run him off his feet is the balking. The big thing I'm looking to feel is a commitment to moving forward without having the feeling that in the back of his mind he's waiting to stop. One way I was able to combat this when riding him before was to run him off balance so that it was harder for him to stop, then he felt like he was forward! Because he couldn't not be forward. But that was not conducive to collection and that's where things started to get really hard for us. 

And I think this is really making the balking worse because he is probably uncomfortable being that off balance, so he wants to slow down to catch his balance, and then I say no I need you to be forward. It's also not fully accepting the aids if the horse literally has no choice but to do the thing. Like if you slap a horse in draw reins, is he actually accepting the aids? Or is there no other choice? I need to give him the chance to balk in order to fix the balking. 

His neck looks great!

So in my recent rides, I've been challenging myself to ride slower. At the walk, I've been playing with some lateral work, asking him to take slow, deliberate steps. My goal is to make the steps more active, but for now I'm not working on that so much. We do straighten and march forward, but in the actual lateral work, I'm not hurrying him. 

Then in the trot, we trot slowly, but we trot slowly and we do harder work, like some lateral work or smaller circles. Then we straighten and we go more forward and he gets a LOT of praise. And then we slow down again (my choice) and he has to work harder, not super hard, just a little harder. 

In my last ride (yesterday), it did seem to help a bit? He definitely got to a more rideable place a little faster than usual, although I did ride earlier in the day. We were able to do a few fun exercises. The first was to do haunches-in at the trot to the right, I'm really working to get him comfortable bringing his right hind away from his body and to engage his left hind and he gave me some really good steps! Nothing too fancy or carrying, just mechanically good steps. And then to the left, we worked on some shoulder-in to renvers (again just like, the smallest amount of angle) and that was great. 

Rico did come over, TC was more
excited than he was though lol

As things got better in the ride, we did a little lateral work down the long side in a slower trot, then on the short sides, I'd counter bend him (not too much, just enough where his body was straighter than the line he was on) and ask him to lengthen his stride a little bit. 

We DID have two balks though. One was tracking left during a walk to trot transition, this was a really popular balking moment for him in the past, so it was not unexpected. I've been really fair (I think) about asking him to trot. I first ask with my leg + voice, then wait, if he doesn't trot, I ask again with my leg + voice and wait. Then if I have to ask a third time, that's when I escalate with my tiny spurs until he goes. 

When I do escalate, I make sure that he's MOVING but then I half halt back to the trot that I had wanted in the first place (vs continuing to chase him) - essentially he has to work much harder to get to the trot I was asking for than he would have had to if he'd just picked up trot. That time to the left, I got to the second ask and I felt him suck back. So that's the start of the balk, not just him ignoring me or taking his sweet time trotting. But once I escalated, he got moving pretty quickly after it, so not a bad balk like before! 

The lighting was weird, but TC is so
cute with him

The second one was during trot in another classic area. To the right in this one corner of the arena, we turn to go "uphill" and by uphill, I mean that my arena is a 1% grade, it's not actually truly uphill. This is a place where he likes to stall out and start hover trotting, so as we came around the corner, I asked him to please move a bit more forward. Instead, he threw himself through his right shoulder and darted inward, and when I put my leg on, he sucked back and went more sideways. This is pretty classic setup for a balk for him - I ask for forward, he contorts his body and then becomes ANGRY with me for expecting him to go forward from such a crooked place. But if I block him from becoming crooked, he balks really hard (head straight up, refusing to take a step forward) and becomes ANGRY with me for blocking him because obviously he's really just trying to go forward and needs to shift his weight to do so. 

For that one, again I escalated and then he was totally fine. I do think the spurs are a much better choice than the whip. I wish I'd switched a while ago. The whip sometimes would cause him to buck and that's something he can do... while balking. So I think I'm going to keep the spurs and just carry the whip for lighter aids like asking him to remember that he has hind legs. 

This is what I feel like at work AND
with TC right now lol

I was a little disappointed with the balking (although it really wasn't bad), and of course I considered overthinking it. But I did make a conscious decision to ride him slower and put him at risk of balking. I do think that's the right call. My hope is to give him confidence that I'm not going to run him past his balance, and to get me recalibrated to develop the feeling of forward from a more appropriate stride length. And unfortunately there will be times where his muscle memory takes over. 

And maybe there IS pain there, I will be scheduling him for injections again in February and we'll do the last things on our laundry list. But so far I feel comfortable pushing him a little bit up until that appointment (which is only like, three and a half weeks of riding since I'll be gone for a lot of January - and at least one of those weeks it will be pouring rain so it's pretty minimal work) to find out whether we can get through this. 

But by the end of the ride, he felt great. He was happily pretty forward (for him), we ended on a fabulous note of him doing some lateral work with me being able to actually half halt him to rebalance him, and he was super pleased at the end of the ride with his ears forward and happily marching out on the tracks to go home. 

Crooked Pipe Cleaner

I rode TC a few times over the weekend and it went super well! And now that things are actually happening, I feel like I have more to say on this blog. 

Today I want to talk more about TC's hind end mechanic that Kate pointed out. I had more time to think about it and ride him through it over the weekend and it has really connected the dots for me. 

On Saturday we went on the trails!

As a recap, TC has this odd mechanic in his hind end where his right hind will sweep inward under his body, stiffen against the ground, and then his left hind "pole vaults" over his right hind and appears to be stepping short as he unloads his right hind early. 

There are three other things that I think are relevant to this: 

1. When TC pees, he cocks his left hip rather than stretching out evenly on both hind legs.

2. TC has had a "weak" left stifle, where if he doesn't get enough hill work for 4-6 months, he will go hopping lame on his left hind (stifle ultrasounds clear + hasn't happened in a long time)

3. When grooming, TC often lifts his right hind and wants me to scratch it in a location I clearly am not able to reach (I've long thought this was sciatica)

In addition, TC has the following kind of odd patterns undersaddle:

- Lateral work has been historically difficult for him, especially haunches-in (in both directions, but especially in one direction but I can't remember which one)

- He wants to fall out over his right shoulder, especially tracking left, if you block him from doing this, this is when the balking is the worst

- He struggles more to bend to the right, he would rather fold his neck in at the base than really bend through his body, if he can't fold at the neck, he'd rather bend the other way

- When tracking right, if he thinks we might change directions and go left, he throws his right shoulder aggressively inward, shortening his neck so that he can look the other way 

- His left canter has been tougher to pick up, but his right canter has/had this weird dropping/retraction of the base of his neck in the downbeat that is super odd to me 

Not into the view that day

One of the things I've been thinking a lot about is like... I don't necessarily have to know why it happened, I just have to see the pattern, recognize the pattern, and change the pattern. I tried to figure out the WHY behind my hip injury, but that didn't really help me at all in recovering. Instead, we figured out what made it hurt, what didn't make it hurt, what structures were weak (so I could strengthen them) and what were tight (so I could loosen them). And now I'm much better, and 0% closer to understanding what caused it. 

So for TC, I don't want to chase the why, I've spent a LOT of time doing that. I think all of the above are related, certainly. But I don't care what caused what or if there is a secret other thing that caused all of it. I care about fixing it. 

It's hard to get him to stand still for conformation
shots generally, but this is where he is right now

How to fix it though. Well, I'm starting with where we are at now - sweeping the leg, stiffening it, pole vault. And then considering where I'd like it to be - taking weight more evenly behind, lowering the right hip when tracking right, reaching with the left hind. And finally, trying to connect the dots so that it's a clear path forward for both of us. Mostly to prevent me from asking for too much too soon and him from getting defensive. 

My first steps I think are to get him tracking straight in a straight line and in order to do that, I need him stepping up into both reins evenly and willingly. That will help me gain more influence over him and start to feel where the weaknesses are in his body. 

After that, I think my goal is to address the bending weirdness. Normally I'd want to address that in a circle, but given how much he can pole vault on a circle, I decided to stick with the shallow loops Kate had suggested after our first ride. This way I can work on my feel for when he does this, since I really have no feel for it after all these years with him doing it. It just kinda feels like him. 

I took video with Pivo in the corner, the video
quality is TERRIBLE so I'll be looking into a
different location. My goal is to take video once
per week to check in

From there, we can move onto circles, and also some bending exercises. Eventually I want to reintroduce lateral work in a way that encourages him to take weight on his right hind and to also encourage him to step through with his left hind. But I think all of that right now would be way too much for him and it would be counter productive. I think if I make the work too hard for him, he's going to immediately fall back on old patterns. I mean, same, it literally took me 9 months to rebuild my squat, and most of those 9 months were spent with the 45lb bar and a band around my legs. But hey, once I could squat pain free like that, I packed on the pounds way faster than I thought. 

And I think that's why the connection piece is so important - I've got to have more influence over him in a way where I can actually feel what is going on. And he's got to give me some of his body to actually influence and learn that it will be fun and not excessively difficult. 

He felt better than he looked, but he looked better
than he did on Monday

Anyway, we've started this protocol, mostly working on the connection to start, and it's going well! I definitely felt some progress over the weekend, with the connection piece coming earlier in our rides and more consistent. And our shallow loops feel much better and more controllable laterally. My primary mantra has been "even into both reins from both hind legs," focusing more on the channel between his left hind and left rein and his right hind and right rein, rather than imagining an X over his body (left hind to right rein and right hind to left rein) which I think is too sophisticated for us right now (and would encourage the pole vaulting). 

When turning right, I've encouraged his hind end to stay a little to the inside of the turn, since he tends to fall in with his shoulder and twist his hind end out. We've also worked a lot on flexion to the inside, rather than folding the neck. And to the left, I'm making sure that my outside leg (right leg) isn't too far back, since that's something I like to do that definitely makes this worse. I'm also riding him a little straighter than normal this direction so that I can keep him weighting both shoulders evenly. 

The forward is still tough, but it definitely improves by the end of the ride and I'm working a lot on actually STAYING to the outside of him rather than trying to connect to him by meeting him where he is, since when I do that, he seems to wilt away from me. That's super hard since I want to just get in there and ride him. But it's been really helpful to focus completely on drawing him out to me rather than me sinking into him. It takes longer, but it does work and he will step out to meet my aids by the end of the ride. And then he gets lots of praise! 

Still a long way to go but definitely a better shape
than our first ride

Again, I could lament about how long this will take, or how much is still wrong. But in September when I went to the vet, I wasn't sure I'd get this feeling again. Not just how he feels to ride, but the feeling of looking forward to riding and working on all this stuff. I'd kind of been concerned that the partnership between us had been broken, and that even if he felt better, I wouldn't have the patience to work through all the baggage and behavioral stuff with him and we'd backslide. So it's great to feel like this so soon after getting back undersaddle. 

I only have four more weeks left before I leave the country for three weeks. Previously I was like... a little bummed I'd miss three weeks of potential rehab, mostly in the sense that I'm worried he'll gain weight or whatever. But now I'm bummed because I'm genuinely going to miss riding during that time! 

Unwinding Ridden Work

As I mentioned yesterday, I bought a saddle and rode TC in it! Actually, I've ridden him in it twice now and I'm genuinely looking forward to riding him in it today. 

I was glad that on the first day, I was able to grab some video. And I was also grateful to be able to send those videos to Kate and get her opinion on them. It's really hard to see my own horse with fresh eyes and I am really struggling with looking at this situation objectively. It's been a mix of emotions where I feel really horrible that we got to this place, and really frustrated (both with me and with him a little), and because of that, I can't really break things down as easily just watching the video by myself.

I have no horse photos but I took a day off on
Tuesday to both go birding by the coast and to go
to TC's breeder's Celebration of Life

The few things I noticed were:

- We are both really defensive of each other, it's like I'm preparing for him to balk and he's preparing for me to stuff him forward. I look very hesitant in my riding, but in the same way you're hesitant when you're super frustrated but trying to remain calm. Like there's a hardness living inside of my hesitation. 

- He's not letting me in, I feel like I'm sitting outside of him and if I try to sit into him at all, he gives me a warning about balking. I described it as when I'm helping someone write code who doesn't have a basic understanding of the language, so I'm like, half asking them to write it and half literally spelling it out for them. And then I see what they've written and I'm like... I mean technically that will run but that's... just weird. 

Kate saw all of that as well, but also pointed out a mechanic he's fallen into with his hind end, where his right hind sweeps under his body but not in a carrying way, it stiffens straight and then his left hind kind of pole vaults over it. That was a really huge realization and I think will change things for us. But I've got to give it more thought and try to feel it a bit better before I write about it. 

His breeder was quite the character,
I will really miss her, I've had a few
losses recently and while this one
was not completely unexpected, it was
still a loss of a very influential person
in my (and TC's) life <3

There were good things too - for the most part, he had a pretty pleasant expression on his face! He looks sound and happy enough to do his work. And he hasn't been bolting or balking much. 

And while I've got some weird stuff going on in my pelvis, I still maintained quite a good mechanic! It's funny, I think the pelvis thing is the fact that I rehabbed my hip injury all this year. I feel great, I did physical therapy and now I work with a personal trainer who helped me come up with a very effective program that has allowed me to avoid surgery! But now my hips are quite a lot looser. Stronger yes, but much looser. And I think a lot of my riding mechanic depended on my hips being a little tight. So now there's this slightly odd twisty thing I'm doing with my hips in my posting mechanic. 

I see my trainer for a private session (I normally do groups with my gym buddies since it's more affordable and more fun that way!) soon, so I need to really take inventory of what is going on so that we can talk about it and get me a bit better stabilized for riding. But it's progress! Even if I'm a bit wonky right now, my hip hasn't hurt at all while riding and I'm really not as unfit as I thought I'd be.

It was a nice day to just wander along the coast
with friends and family, and then go celebrate her

On the second day, armed with some of Kate's exercises (who I am very thankful for, since I seem incapable of doing any critical thinking about the horse right now), I decided that I wanted to try to improve the connection. This is the purpose of me riding him - because I have more influence over it, so if I can't get him well connected, we may as well go back to long lining. 

Back in the day, this horse had the dreamiest connection, he was tough to get there, but once there it was like I could draw him into the work I wanted him to do. We lost that along the way, and I think I'd really like to get him back to that place. Especially since showing is not really a huge goal of mine (like obviously I will show him a little if he comes back since he loves it, but it's not the primary driver), so we can take things slow and we don't have to stick within the confines of a test. I do think that's what happened, slowly but surely he had to do a thing NOW and my trainers were in my ears making that very clear. I don't think that's bad, I just think that it caused a loss of trust. But now I get to do it my way!

Meanwhile Christmas exploded at my
workplace and I sat next to this festive
pillow the next morning for breakfast

The first half of the ride was me battling with the frustration of his warm up - he just takes longer these days and I'm trying to figure out what the right balance is between hustling him a little bit forward during it, and leaving him completely alone (which feels like reinforcing him being behind my leg). I do think it's probably better if I longe him through it, but I've been skipping that because I'm greedy and want to ride. 

Side bar- this reminds me of a client I had whose horse would take exactly twenty minutes to warm up, regardless of what you did. When I rode her, I'd get up in my half seat and just do trot sets, then she'd be ready to work. But my client would come to me each week with a new theory that if she just does X exercise (which took her twenty minutes to discover) it worked super well. Then she'd start with that exercise and wouldn't you know it, the horse wouldn't immediately warm up and the client would be frustrated. 

Then, the middle part of the ride was me fighting the urge to just put him on the damn bit. He was floating above and away from me and would give me his nose, tucked nicely like the little faker his friesian breeding encourages him to be, but I had zero access to his back or the base of his neck. I resorted to pulling on the face since that's a tried and true method (that doesn't work but it FEELS like it works. It's like using an AI assistant at work, feels like progress but at the end of the day, it just produces spaghetti code that sure, you've tested a lot, but still doesn't work - lots of work metaphors today). During this part, I was working on some shallow loops, and we were absolutely all over the place. 

And then finally I took a moment to use my brain (very hard right now) and decided to go back to something Tracey used to make me do - hold onto the tab on my saddle pad to give me an idea of how steady my hands are (or are not). I did it enough when TC was younger that it kind of puts us both in a better place. And I'm also so unbelievably out of riding shape and practice that the moment I did it, it made me realize how loose in the tack I had gotten over time, and with this new flexi-hip. 

We also had our year-end social and
they had this random candy bar

Slowly, over the course of a few trot sets, he started to really come onto the bit properly, not just faking it, but I could feel and see in his neck/back that he was much better connected. And I finally got that same feeling I'd had years and years ago, that I could just draw him through the exercises. We rode our shallow loops without them feeling so drunk, and I could feel him start to tune in like "oh this is interesting" for the first time at the very least since last winter, if not longer. And, when we went back to the barn, he had a little hypertrophy in his trapezius (both cervical, and I could convince myself thoracic too), which has only really happened on trail rides so far. 

I kind of couldn't believe it? Our second ride back and by the end of it, we got to a place where I'd be super happy to stay indefinitely? 

Anyway, we have a LONG way to go, this could have just been a fluke, we could still see the same pattern happen next summer where he begins to feel terrible again, I could just be making this up as I careen into the end of the year after a really stressful half... but I'm relishing in the fact that this is the first time I'm genuinely looking forward to riding my horse in quite a long time. 

I Bought a Saddle

I had a moment of weakness this weekend when Google Photo's memories thing decided to remind me that the best my horse ever really looked was in fall/winter 2021 and then I fucked it up somehow. That's not exactly what it told me, but it's the way I decided to interpret it so that I could spiral about it a bit. 

I actually rode my horse! I took his noseband off
a while back and tbh I have no idea where I put it

TC still looks unfortunate after three months of rehab and I'm ready to make a change between now and February when we do his next round of injections. I went through those pictures and some of my blog posts during that time to figure out what was I doing. 

1) the horse was WAY fitter, he had come off of 2020 doing Third level, he had just moved to the ranch in 2021 and had a lot more energy there which got us through the tough summer months, and then in the fall I had been able to maintain that momentum keeping him fit as the ground softened and it got cooler, he really didn't lose a ton of fitness until 2022

2) I had just gone through a program doing a lot of work strengthening his thoracic sling. That had happened right at the beginning of fall, so all that fitness and leftover muscle combined with a really targeted thoracic sling program built him up quite nicely

3) I was riding him in a pegasus butterfly saddle I had been borrowing from Kate

I ended up being real wishy washy about that saddle because while TC loved it, my back did not. I really couldn't sit the trot in it, so I decided to thank Kate for letting me borrow it (for quite a while, thanks Kate!) but I gave it back and got a custom saddle fit for TC then. And that really didn't work out. 

The right is much more unbalanced

I decided that I wanted to cherry pick some of the exercises I had been doing during that time out of that thoracic sling program to add to my current program. I don't think TC's TS is truly the main issue right now, but I have been noticing that he's quite narrow in the chest still, so I'd like to get him thinking more about lifting through his pectorals. 

And I also went on facebook marketplace and searched for a saddle like the one I'd borrowed. Kate had ended up selling it to one of her students a while back and WOULDN'T YOU KNOW, it was for sale. 

So I impulse purchased it. 

Which, I did defend myself to my friends, is kind of how I purchase saddles. I bought my favorite dressage saddle (the one I rode Rico in and the one I rode TC in until 2021) from a random tack shop for $600. I bought a jumping saddle last year randomly. And many many others.

But this one was the right price, and it fits Sundance at least, so if TC says "no thanks" to it, I'll at least have a use for it. 

In selective screenshots, he looks alright

I snagged it on Monday! It fit him well, although I did put a half pad between just for more cushion. He still really doesn't have enough topline to support a saddle, so I wanted to help him out a little bit. Like, it's kinda borderline, I see plenty of horses with toplines like this doing all kinds of impressive sport horse things, but for me and him, it's just not what I want. There's been part of me that has wondered whether getting back on would help him put on muscle faster too. So I figured I may as well try it if he'll tolerate it. 

And on Monday we rode in it! Like an entire ride. And I learned a LOT, even if it was more along the lines of painful realizations. I'll share those later. But essentially, we have a lot of work to do to rehabilitate the behavioral patterns. And separating those from the pain patterns is going to be really complicated. 

I'm still debating whether to ride him in it more, or go back to long lining, or do a combination of the two. Is it unkind to put him back to ridden work before he is looking better? Or does he need ridden work in order to look better? Even though I quite literally haven't posted the trot in like 6 months outside of the two rides I did on him in the TCS during this rehab, I do have quite a bit more influence over him when I'm on him vs on the long lines. 

Either way, I'm really glad I snagged the saddle and have something to ride in! Even just on the trails because he's gotten real spry out there and I want to be able to cling onto him when he zips after the deer. 

Letting Him Warm Up

TC is up to 16 minutes of work now! Which is not no work, so that's pretty cool. I don't think he's been this fit in a while, since he got the summer basically off and last winter I didn't do too much with him. 

The way I have it structured is to do 1:30 minute trot sets with 1 minute breaks in between. Then every 3 trot sets, we change direction which I give him 2 minutes to do. This works out to 4 overarching directional work sets. So left, then right, then left, then right. A total of about an hour in the arena (if you include the 12-15 minute walk before and after all of those trot sets, which I sometimes do on the tracks). 

My next goal is to collapse those into 2 minute work sets, except instead of 3 sets, we'll do 2 sets. That will keep us at 16 minutes but be lengthening the amount of time that he's trotting. 

From a recent trail ride

The reason why I'm doing it this way, and this slowly, is that the problem I've had with him is that he gets really balky about transitions and frequently slams on the brakes while I'm riding him. So I started him with 30 seconds of trot and we've slowly worked up to working longer, with plenty of breaks in between. 

I figured that this would help him mentally understand that he will never have to work forEVER and that he will get breaks, just not when he demands them. I think we both fell into this pattern where he'd slam on the brakes and I'd keep hustling him along and I'd probably work him longer than I would have if he hadn't slammed on the brakes, basically showing him why he should slam on the brakes in the first place. So having this schedule, and having it go super slowly, has been really good for us. It's us working together against the rehab schedule, not against each other. 

It also means that we do more transitions! So I've been able to watch the way he does transitions and encourage him when he does them well. When we started this rehab, he was kind of hopping into trot, like hurling himself into it with his neck. This still sometimes happens, but it's not happening nearly as much as it used to. I've also started doing some transitions within the gaits and transitions from walk to trot and trot to walk, as well as a few here and there adding some steps of canter. This has helped him stay more engaged mentally too! 

He's been a nut to trail ride recently

And finally, it's been really good for me to see him warm up and get better as he works more. I definitely think I'll be longeing him before riding him when I do start riding him. He starts out just kind of slow and a little stiff, not lame but not energetically moving forward. The other day, I was trying to convince myself to not work him because he looked so bad. Like why am I tormenting this poor horse. 

But I've told myself to blindly stick to my rehab plan until next summer when I confirm that it hasn't worked. And so I kept asking him to do his trot sets. And you KNOW WHAT? He worked out of it and looked the best he's looked in a while by the end of his work. 

I think his muscle wasting and his balking slowly led me to baby him a little (a lot). And for good reason -I do not want to beat my horse through a dressage test while he looks like a rescue case. But I think it softened me a little too much. I've noticed this in my personal training sessions, where my trainer has figured out when to really push me (when I am just complaining) and when to pull back and either change what I am doing or have me do some prehab exercises before continuing (when I mention my hip injury). But he never has me stop working out and go home. So I'm channeling that for TC too! 

Keeps hitting his deer threshold and
then using his new cardiovascular
fitness to have feelings about it lol

I think my goal is to get him up to about 20 minutes of work and try to have the work sets be something like 5 minutes each. I do want that to take time. The nice thing about this system is that I can notice when he starts to offer to walk and wait until he's not offering too early in the trot set before I move him up.

But really, I'm just winging this. My primary goal is to have him in completely full work by the end of the winter/spring (maybe 30 minutes total work? ideally with 6-8 minute work sets) so that we are going into the tougher summer days with him super fit and happy to work. Who knows if we'll actually make it there! I'll keep hoping and keep moving toward it though.

Rehab Rollercoaster

Things are going well and also not well at the same time for TC. I'm trying not to let myself get jerked around emotionally by this mystery lameness/problem too much. But sometimes it's hard! 

I took a couple of screenshots on the longe one day

I'm super pleased with how he looks when he's moving, especially after warm up. He definitely still has a slight unevenness in his left hind, so I'm considering that this could be his left stifle - I'm going to talk to the vet about injecting that when we go back in February. But he does seem to work out of it pretty well. 

He's lifting pretty well through his back, I can see his abs coming in, with a nice line from his girth all the way back to his flank. He's reaching nicely for the contact, even though it's just on the long lines. His withers are staying fairly well up and his neck is staying out. He's pretty forward at the trot - certainly more forward after he warms up. He's still a little reluctant to canter all that much, it's a bit stifled and slow, but I have seen improvement in that. He's still building strength. We're doing cavalletti, transitions, reining back, and he's on the bit the whole time he works. He's doing the work, it's just not showing in his body. 

Like I don't hate this at all

And at the same time, he still looks like garbage in the stall/paddock. I know he is a low tone horse, and this is why I'm being patient (or trying to be at least). I really hope things start to change in that department though. His back is still sunken and he's got minimal glutes, so he just looks... awful. 

But I have been able to get him burning enough calories to eat more hay, and now we're slowly switching him from Teff to Orchard (better nutrients). Once that is done, my next goal will be to add some alfalfa. He is getting enough protein because of the ration balancer, but I'd love for him to get alfalfa in his diet too! We had to take him off of it because it was so high calorie. 

Zero topline, I am aware

I'm starting to make a list of everything I want to do in February as well. Reminder that I'm waiting until February after the vet said that we should see a change in the topline by then if it was a limb-joint issue that we treated with the injections. Patience is hard!

The vet I saw for the injections had said that he'd recommend getting an internal medicine specialist on the case. So I'm considering bringing them both in for the appointment in February. Here's what I'm thinking about asking for:

- Lameness + neuro exam, see if he's improved since our November appointment, especially on the neuro exam (if he is better, that would give me a lot of hope that he was just out of shape vs actually neurological)

- Neck injections C5/6 + C6/7 both sides

- Left stifle injection

- Scope for ulcers

- Redo all blood tests (incl. for Selenium levels this time)

After this appointment, I'll also get the nutritionist involved. I wanted to call her this fall, but I realized that a) I didn't have all the bloodwork I wanted and b) he wasn't in enough work where I could even feed him enough. So I think by February, we'll be all set to check on that. 

I'm really hoping that we get to a point where things start to improve and I can get back on him. I really think that's going to be a big test! I'm still waiting for his back to look like, an ounce better (well, more than that). 

I dunno, he's at least not getting horrifically worse

In the meantime, I'm ordering him some things to help him out. I noticed that when I was trail riding him (which I do bareback), his bareback pad was putting a bit of pressure on his withers. So I ordered him a fancy one that hopefully won't. And I'm also going to change his girth and get him a nice fleece half pad in preparation for riding him. I want to get him as comfortable as I can, even just to rule out equipment as part of the problem. 

So we'll keep plugging away and hope that one day the before pictures are actually BEFORE and not just pictures of what he looks now only cleaner. 

Forward and Back

TC's rehab keeps plugging along. He is now still at 12 minutes of trot, but we're doing it in 1 minute increments. My plan is to take that up to maybe a minute and a half or two minutes, then start adding more intervals until he's closer to 15 minutes of trot. THEN I think we'll experiment with canter.

In the mean time, I've started getting a little more demanding on the trot work. He likes to do this forward and back exercise in trot, so I introduced that again this week and he's been having fun with it. I think it helps because it encourages him to find his balance in the slower trot, then push out of that slower trot into a bigger trot, then back again. Lots of rewarding for going when I ask and also slowing down without stopping. And working all those muscles that will hopefully keep him happily moving forward when I finally get on him. 

Like I worry about him a bit and then
I get this photo of the lengths he will
go to in order to get a sprig of grass

I wish he'd pack on muscle a little faster, it's easy to overthink with how slowly things are going right now. I do think that things are getting *slightly* better on that front. When he's moving, I can see him using the right muscles, and when he's standing, only sometimes does he look really decrepit (vs all the time). But then he'll shift his weight and look like a rescue case. 

More of the work I described above should help, as well as adding canter. I think that's going to make a big difference. I've been avoiding it because it was such a tough thing for him before, canter is his hardest gait and especially when he's under muscled. He has a HUGE canter, and when he was young and also when he was in rehab for his suspensory, he struggled a lot with it. So I want to do as much as I can in the trot to build the muscle he needs to support him in the canter. 

Walking out after working

After being locked in, on Tuesday he came out a little less comfortable. I think he was just stiff. He definitely worked out of it and looked the best he's looked by the end of the session, so that was promising! But I am still seeing the tiniest amount of shortness in his left hind. 

Since we're a couple of weeks out from the injections, I would have expected that to have improved more if it were his left hock. So I feel good about ruling that out as the cause of the minor diagonal imbalance in his body. I'm still considering getting his neck injected with the remaining Alpha2 in February, and I think I may see whether we have enough to also do his left stifle. It ultrasounded totally fine at our initial vet appointment in September, but I figure it can't hurt. It's been a problem for almost the entire time I've owned him and we never really got answers about it. That's another body part I'd be super cool to inject the hell out of to keep this horse happy!

Missing the trails, it'll be a little bit before we get
to go up there again

But outside of that, he really does seem to be doing better. I think being locked in made him happier to work. He was pretty forward aside from being stiff, and he seems a little more interested in his work. The bit flexions are going well too! 

I think what I'm waiting for now is to see improvement in his back. I think I could do better work undersaddle, but only if I have a saddle that fits him. And that will only happen when his back isn't so sunken in. I'm not sure what the threshold is going to be, but I know I'm not there yet. I'm definitely considering quite a bit how I want to handle putting a saddle on him. On the one hand, I want something that fits him *very* well so that he isn't uncomfortable at all due to the saddle, but I'm also skeptical about buying him something new knowing very well that he might not make it out of this rehab rideable in the way that I'd want him to be if I were buying him a new saddle. 

I have a couple of saddles that seem to fit him okay, so I may get him a very nice half pad with the ability to shim it and just try longeing him in it for a little bit. See if he'll tell me yes or no on the longe line so that I don't have to get on him and reinforce the balking again. But that's pretty far down the line I expect!